Holy Cross – Page 13 – Ciocca Center for Business, Ethics, and Society Blog

February 10, 2014

Holy Cross Students Meet Warren Buffett on Trip of a Lifetime

Another guest post, from Kevin Dufault ’14. who reflects on a once in a lifetime opportunity – meeting Warren Buffett!
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Just a week ago on January 31, 2014, Warren Buffett welcomed 18 Holy Cross students into Berkshire Hathaway’s headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. Warren Buffett, widely recognized as the world’s greatest investor, is admired by aspiring financers across the globe. He is a true source of inspiration for the millions of motivated students who see investing in their future. Smart, motivated, and driven students look up to Warren Buffett as an example of just what can happen when you dedicate yourself to your true passion in life. As Mr. Buffett tells undergraduate and business school students, “Find your passion in life and never stop pursuing it. If you haven’t found it yet, don’t stop searching”.

For me, it all began in mid-August when I received an email notifying me of the opportunity Holy Cross received to take a trip to Berkshire Hathaway in Omaha and spend a day with Warren Buffett. Bobby Sullivan ’08 initiated the event by contacting Professor Chu, Director of Entrepreneurial Studies. At this time, I was not officially selected to attend the trip but rather, simply considered a candidate. All I can remember is immediately grabbing my cellphone and texting my family about this amazing opportunity. Flash forward to today, when I find myself reflecting back on the experience I and eighteen other students recently had. There was one particular theme I began realizing throughout all the preparation our group had in anticipation of our trip to Berkshire Hathaway – defining the experience of meeting Warren Buffett. Personally, I could not synthesize a sufficient title for this opportunity. After all, how do you label something that so drastically exceeds your deepest desires and highest expectations? Eventually, however, “Once in a Lifetime Experience of Meeting Warren Buffett” seemed to catch on with the group.

Our trip to Berkshire Hathaway speaks volumes of the Holy Cross Pre-Business Program. The Pre-Business Program, led by Professor Chu and Associate Director, Cassie (Murphy) Gevry, has certainly put Holy Cross students on the map in the business world. It is truly amazing to see how far the program has come over the past few years. As a member of the advisory board to the program, it has been very exciting to be a part of the growing success. Holy Cross has always had a strong presence of graduates in business and in finance. Take a stroll down Wall Street, the finance capital of the world and you are sure to meet a number of alumni from the College. Still, many Holy Cross students graduate without ever realizing the value that can be derived from a liberal arts education upon entering business, finance, or investing careers. That is exactly the issue Professor Chu has worked so hard to solve through his work with the Pre-Business Program. “Businesses are about people”, Professor Chu consistently preaches to members of the program. The Holy Cross curriculum teaches students to think critically in a variety of subjects, solve problems, communicate effectively, and harness good ethics. These are traits every business needs, especially in managerial roles.

From Wall Street to Omaha, Nebraska, Holy Cross continues to make its presence known in the financial services industry. The lessons Mr. Buffett taught us during our time at Berkshire Hathaway are ones that we will never forget. He continuously expressed the value in his relationships with friends and colleagues. When asked what the greatest investment he ever made was, Buffett replied, “My marriage”. The friendships he has built with people such as Charlie Munger and Bill Gates, and the love that can be found in his home are Buffett’s most cherished possessions.

After spending a couple hours in Berkshire Hathaway’s headquarters, where Mr. Buffett answered the questions students never thought they would have answered by the finance guru himself, we were invited to tour a few of Berkshire’s largest subsidiaries. The tour included an inside look at Nebraska Furniture Mart, Oriental Trading Company, and Borsheim’s Fine Jewelry. In addition to our tours, we were lucky enough to be invited for lunch with Mr. Buffett at Piccolo Pete’s. The entire day was truly amazing. It’s one of those rare occasions when the reality of what you are experiencing does not fully register with you until it’s over.

The trip would not have been possible without the hard work and great leadership of a few people. They were the cornerstone to this entire journey and deserve great recognition for their long hours of commitment. Andrew Marzo ’14, President of the Holy Cross Finance Club, and member Christina Rudolf ’14 led the way as organizers of the trip. They were outstanding leaders throughout the months of preparation. From the beginning, we knew we could count on Andrew and Christina to keep us well informed, prepared, and supported on our journey to Omaha. Dan Riccardi ’06, from the Holy Cross Investment Office prepared us with an introduction to Berkshire Hathaway’s finances, and background on Warren Buffett’s life and career. Dan joined us on the trip and was always available to help make our trip the best it could be. Lastly, and perhaps most important to me, I cannot say enough about the group of students we had on this trip. As a senior at Holy Cross, I have met some great people over the past four years. And, I am happy to say that I recently met some of the kindest and most driven students on campus. I think we all gained some of the greatest memories we will ever have and it was a pleasure to enjoy this experience with them.
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Always great to hear directly from the students -Thanks Kevin, for your gracious post!

Don’t forget to “Like” us on FACEBOOK and Follow us @HCPrebusiness and be on the lookout for our next post.

Cassie Gevry
Associate Director, Entrepreneurial Studies

September 25, 2013

HC Shark Tank Winner Ben Kaplan ’16 Set to Launch New Social Networking App

As those of you who are avid readers of this blog might remember, last spring the Ciocca Office of Entrepreneurial Studies and the Entrepreneurship Club co-sponsored the inaugural Holy Cross Shark Tank competition where Ben Kaplan ’16 took home the grand prize for his original social networking app: WiGO.

Well, we are excited to announce that since last spring Kaplan has taken serious strides towards making WiGO (Who is Going Out) come alive and he has the initial launch slated for this early October. Holy Cross just might have its very own Mark Zuckerburg on its hands.

The goal of Kaplan’s app is to simplify the process of making social plans for college students. As a freshman at HC, Kaplan felt that making social plans and figuring out “who is going out?” was unnecessarily challenging. College students didn’t want to constantly be sending out group texts and no one wanted to always be posting all the details of social plans online and so WiGO was born.

The app creates networks based on a users’ college or university email address so that, for example, when an HCer logs in their homepage will show all of the other HCers who are users and indicate who has – or has not – said they’re headed out that night. There’s no specifics given, just “I am going out”, and there’s no friending process like with Facebook. Rather, if you go to HC you can see everyone else in your network and vice versa. From there, Kaplan believes that this app will make it easy to see who wants to go out and then utilize the app’s chat function to make plans. Additionally, if you see someone on the app who you’d like to encourage to go out you have the option to “shoulder tap” them, which lets them know you’d like them to see them out.

I had the chance to sit down and talk to Kaplan last week, as he prepared for the upcoming app launch, and what I was really struck by was the way he has developed an initial idea he had last spring into a real live app. He explained to me how he’d started the summer interviewing web developers and coders and ultimately settled on a team from Green Mountain Software, located in his hometown of Burlington, VT. He then spent the rest of the summer working with them to take what was initially an idea in his head and turn it into something that’s accessible and user friendly. We discussed why he decided to hire a local team, rather than outsourcing the coding as many app developers do, and he said that the opportunity to actually meet with, and have easy access to, his coding team was ultimately one of the best decisions he made. It allowed him to take real ownership in the creation process and meant that he could be involved making changes and decisions during the course of development.

Kaplan also credited the Holy Cross alumni network as being indispensable in this process. The time and feedback that he said so many alumni were willing to give him was very beneficial in the development of this app. Last spring, Shark Tank judge Chris Stephenson had told Kaplan that if he brought his idea to Seattle he’d meet with him to discuss. Kaplan cashed in on this promise over the summer, flying to the West Coast to meet, and also said that there were many other alumni who connected him with local entrepreneurs, weighed in on questions of copyright and intellectual property law and offered feedback as he moved through the process.

Obviously in launching an app, the marketing efforts are, in many ways, as important as the actual coding and Kaplan explained that he had a clear game plan for that too: he was starting by focusing on sports teams here at HC, because such a larger percentage of students are involved in them, and had reached out to individuals on the various teams to get them onboard as ambassadors. The plan is that these individuals will encourage their teammates to download, and use, the app thus creating the initial injection of users needed to get WiGO off the ground. From there the hope is that it will catch on organically and as students see how easy and effective it is to use they will encourage their friends to use it, too.

What’s the plan long term? Well, Kaplan is initially launching the app exclusively here at Holy Cross and you need to have a verified Holy Cross student email address in order to register. But, looking forward, Kaplan said his next step would be to roll it out to a handful of additional colleges, continue to monitor its growth, and then allow it to continue to spread to schools across the country.

Towards the end of our talk Kaplan said that he thinks no matter what happens with WiGO – whether it gets off the ground or not – the process of creating the app and bringing it to market has been incredibly valuable in and of itself. That being said, after listening to him for an hour – hearing where the idea came from, how he built the app, and how he plans to roll it out – this blogger has a hard time believing Kaplan isn’t going to make this a success.

March 7, 2013

Exploring Global Business and Corporate Social Responsibility with Green Mountain Coffee-Keurig on Day 4

Karen Gallagher, Senior Marketing Director at Green Mountain Coffee – Keurig and mother of a current Holy Cross junior, braved the snow on the fourth day of ELW 2013 to make sure the students could learn about global business and corporate social responsibility (or, CSR). As was a theme of the week, the day was focused on group work. Karen kicked off the session giving an overview of GMCR/Keurig, highlighting the company’s mission and values, the way they communicate (or, don’t communicate) these values to all invested constituencies – employees, customers, farmers, etc – and the challenges that GMCR/Keurig is facing. She talked about a couple of particularly interesting initiatives that really showcased how, as an employer, GMCR/Keurig differentiates itself, including the fact that all employees are allotted 52 hours per year to do service work at the location of their choice. As students at Holy Cross, where the idea of being “men and women for others” is important, you could see a lot of the students intrigued that a company would do something like that. Then, Karen also talked a lot about the importance of marketing, using examples of particularly effective television ads, to show how good marketing can clearly communicate who a company is and what they stand for and, as a result, build brand recognition and loyalty.

With the overview complete, Karen sent the students off to work in their teams to put together a presentation on how GMCR/Keurig could to a better job communicating its initiatives internally and externally as well as how the company could create a sustainable competitive advantage. The students were charged with creating a presentation highlighting where the current strengths were and then suggesting tangible action items that could enhance GMCR/Keurig’s communications.

With just two hours to work on this presentation, the results were impressive. The students suggested things like revamping the K-cup box to really highlight what the company is doing, creating an “Employee of the Year” award highlighting someone who really embodies GMCR/Keurig’s commitment to CSR and coming up with ways to better facilitate everyone participating in service opportunities and marketing those experiences so customers are aware they are happening. All of the teams agreed that the “stuff” GMCR/Keurig is doing is positive – they are committed and really incorporate their corporate values into the business, but they need to figure out a way to make the initiatives clearer and broadcast them to a wider audience.

The day wrapped up with an exciting surprise – the two teams of students that Karen deemed the winners of the presentations were awarded their own Vue single cup brewers, the latest product by Keurig! Some of the students asked to have them shipped to Holy Cross – so they’ll be ready to help them cram through the end of the semester – and a couple of the students asked them to be sent home as a nice surprise for their lucky parents!

The snow is going to roll in tomorrow so we’ll see what that means for Day 5 of ELW but, regardless, we’ve had 4 jam packed days of learning and teamwork and I think all of the students have already learned quite a bit about both careers in business and leadership skills.

As always, don’t forget to “Like” us on FACEBOOK and look for our WIB, SBP and ELW groups on LinkedIN!

Helene

Helene Horan
Associate Director, Entrepreneurial Studies

March 6, 2013

Day 3 of ELW: How to be ethical and why you shouldn’t buy a BMW.

Day 3 of ELW 2013 focused on leading a company and handling “ethical pitfalls”. Led by Tom Patton ’86, President and CEO of CASMED, and Carolyn Risoli ’86, former president of Marc by Marc Jacobs and current principal at CRisoli Consulting, the student teams spent the day reading real case studies that the executives had written and debating among themselves what the ethical questions were and how they should be decided.

The afternoon was particularly interesting as the students had to read a number of brief scenarios and then respond with how they would have acted. Tom and Carolyn started by posing the question of: If you take a company pen home from work, is that stealing? What about 5 pens? 10? A box? Your desk chair? The students quickly realized how tricky business ethics can become as most of them thought that taking a pen wasn’t necessarily stealing but saw their logic unravel as Tom challenged them to thinking about larger items. Another similar scenario dealt with the question of business reimbursements: If your company gives you a $7 cab ride home if you work until after 7 o’clock, is it ok to take that cab ride to a restaurant rather than home? What about going out with your friends and then getting the cab? The debate was lively, with lots of different points of view expressed, and Tom and Carolyn were able to weigh in with how they’ve actually navigated these situations in their roles as executives.

In addition to addressing business ethics, Tom and Carolyn talked to the students about the importance of being careful in business and how quickly things can change. Tom offered the advice that you need to be sure to live within your means, and be financially careful, because as quickly as things can get good, they can take a turn for the worse. Citing examples of young business people he knew, he cautioned the students against falling into the trap of wanting the biggest house and the flashiest car. “The BMW can wait until later,” he said.

The other big message of the day? Tom and Carolyn talked about how it’s easy to be ethical when things are good. What’s important is making sure to remain ethical even when it’s challenging to do so. They encouraged the students to think about two things: first, would you want to see your actions reported in the New York Times? And, second, would you be proud to tell the person you most admire – spouse, child, parent, friend, etc – about what you did? If you’re not comfortable with both, they said, you need to re-think what you’re doing.

Overall, another really interesting day and one that got the students thinking more about what to do when things aren’t going well and how important it is for a leader to be steadfast in what he or she believes is right!

Tonight the students are off to Boston for the HC Alumni Entrepreneur Group’s Networking Session. All of the students in ELW have been challenged to meet at least two new people tonight, so we’ll see how they do…

As always, don’t forget to “Like” us on FACEBOOK and look for our WIB, SBP and ELW groups on LinkedIN!

Helene

Helene Horan
Associate Director, Entrepreneurial Studies

March 6, 2013

Should company culture be a primary or secondary concern in the business world?

Day 2 of the 2013 Executive Leadership Workshop focused on the importance of business culture in creating a sustainable business. Tom Brennan ’86, CEO of Goshido, ran the students through a series of group exercises to get them thinking about whether or not a company’s leadership team should make company culture a primary or secondary priority.

The students engaged in two debates: the first debate was focused on the question of whether company culture should be primary or secondary. However, it was the secondary debate that really got the students going! This debate was based on a Harvard Business School case study about a crisis on Northwest Airlines where customers were stranded on a grounded plane for 8+ hours due to inclimate weather. There were three teams: the customers, the CEOs and the Board of Directors.

Their challenge? The three groups had to try to appease one another – the customers wanted a settlement, the CEOs wanted to keep their jobs and the Board was worried about publicity.

Tom Brennan’s goal was to get the students thinking about the challenges that emerge in companies, particularly between different groups of constituencies, and to understand how communications need to go in order for a company to be sustainable. Tom was pretty clear that in his opinion company culture had to be a primary focus. However, after getting all riled up in the debate, I’m not sure all of the students were complete sure that they agreed.

Today’s topic: Business Ethics. The students are currently mid-discussion of whether or not it’s ok to take a pen home from work. Is that stealing? Or, is it ok…after all, it’s just a pen? Check back tomorrow to see how ethical this group really is!

March 5, 2013

Ideas for new apps created on Day 1 of the 2013 Executive Leadership Workshop!

Yesterday kicked off the 2013 Executive Leadership Workshop and one of the things the students definitely learned was that working a full day (they started at 8:30 am and were busy until 7 pm) is challenging!

Peter George ’81 started off the week talking about how to start and build a business. He was accompanied by Geoff Oblak and Gary Kramer. The students’ challenge for the day: work with their teams to come up with an educational app and then pitch it to the day’s three executive teachers who were acting as Venture Capitalists.

While all the teams came up with interesting ideas, two teams were ultimately rewarded funding: Michael Biggins ’16, Claudia Bechtold ’15, Maggie MacMullin ’16 and Michael Tucker ’14 came up with the idea for BookChat, an online database for professors to post excerpts of readings and where students can engage in online discussions. Nolan Kiernan ’15, Matt Devine ’15, Brendan McGill ’14 and Sophie Haggerty ’16 came up with the idea for SyncroNote, an online note taking software with an audio recording technology. I’m not going to include too many details, in case any of these teams decide to really run with the idea, but the judges were all impressed.

Stay posted for updates on the rest of this week’s workshop. Today’s topic is “Using Culture and Values to Build a Sustainable Business”. Currently the students are split up in groups prepping for a debate on whether culture should be a primary or secondary concern in companies. We’ll see who comes up with the most persuasive argument…